needleworker, was the eldest of the five children of Swedish-born Frederick Peterson and his wife, the London-born English, née Elvins-Cocking. All the children were born in Maryborough, Queensland: Louisa on 11 March 1871, followed by Jane Becloo in 1873, Sophia on 8 May 1874, Gustave Frederick on 13 June 1876 and a fifth child in 1878. While such statistical information can be gleaned from family documents now in the possession of great-grandchildren of Frederick and English, little else is known about Louisa’s life except that she was a highly competent and dedicated, or at least well disciplined, needlewoman. The family thinks she may have died young from tuberculosis.

In 1882, at the age of 11, Louisa completed a major needlework project, a large panel of Berlin woolwork which was later mounted and framed to form a firescreen (MAAS). According to Louisa’s great niece, Florence Leamey, all three sisters embarked on making firescreens in the 1880s. Sophia’s, dated 1886 and completed when she was 12, is now in Mossman, Queensland, while the whereabouts of Jane’s is unknown. By the time Louisa and her sisters were working their needlework panels, Berlin woolwork was no longer as overwhelmingly popular in Europe as it had been. Perhaps no news of either the quieter geometric patterns preferred in the 1870s or the new Art Needlework of the 1880s had reached Maryborough. In any event, since the designs for the girls’ firescreens are strongly European, and since there were three of them, it seems likely that all were acquired together as kits through a mail order catalogue or else used designs found in a magazine or pattern book with materials purchased locally. (Sophia would have been only about eight when Louisa completed her panel in 1882.) The unofficial Australian coat of arms in Louisa’s otherwise very European firescreen design is an obvious addition and suggests she was interested in current nationalist issues.

Writers:

Sumner, Christina

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011